Posted
by
Zonkon Saturday June 18, 2005 @10:36PM
from the pick-your-poison dept.

Martin writes "TipMonkies has a nice overview of various Linux distros for those of you with little time to research each distro yourself. The article also discusses some of the advantages/disadvantages of each distro." From the article: "SUSE- The 'U' is hard and the 'E' is soft. Almost like the word sue with an S on the end. SUSE is the other big commercial distro. It was when it was still it's own company in Germany, and now even bigger since being purchased by Novell."

In Konqueror, you can use man:ls style URLs. Or simply a url of the form '#command'. For KDE commands, you can also open a tutorial by using a URL like help:knotes. Like all KDE extended URLs, they can be used virtually everywhere in KDE - try hitting alt-F2, and then type "man:ls". No need to ever use the mouse.

Most people aren't interested in learning how to not use a GUI. They want to check their email. They want to browse the web. They want to pay their bills online. They want to track their spreadsheet. But most of all, they want to do such things easily and efficiently. That's why GUI-based systems like Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows are so popular.

Have you installed Linux lately for Desktop systems? I installed Fedora Core 4 and Ubuntu recently and was blown away by both. Both detected everything on my relatively new computer and loaded the drivers correctly. With Windows XP, I had the mundane task of installing drivers and programs manually, which isn't fun. Face it: Linux is becoming easier every day.

Linux isn't a desktop OS. No matter what people say, that's not its purpose.

If someone wants to use their computer to check e-mail, browse the web, or pay bills online, they should stick to OS X or Windows...

Ok. Could you maybe open that up a little?

See, for me linux looks like a very good desktop OS. On my old HP laptop Ubuntu works faster and more reliably than Windows 2000 that it replaced (it was also easier to install). Most of my computer use fits in to the categories you mentioned -- the fact

I'd recommend Kubuntu (http://kubuntu.org/ [kubuntu.org]). It offers you the very user friendly power of KDE, combined with the awe inspiring packaging of Debian and the quick release cycles of Ubuntu. The system will be very usable right away, but not as restrictive and Mandrive and Lycoris releases. You'll be able to hit the shell if you choose to do so, but you're not forced into using it by any means.

Fedora is a "GUI distro" why do people think if there is a GUI scripting or CLI commands are not allowed? For every system-config* tool Fedora has there is an ncurses app, or file you can edit with VI that is compatible.
When someone says CLI is more powerfull what they are really saying is, my favorite distro doesn't have a GUI for everything yet. Look guys, we all use the same apps, just some of us have the _OPTION_ of using a GUI to configure it. It doesn't make us less intelligent than you.

Heh... I must be an old fart at heart, then. Sometimes I certainly feel like one (at 26). I was attracted to Linux mostly because it looked difficult. Now please bear with me, I'll get to my points soon. First a tiny bit of background.

I first tried some version (1.x.y) in '94 but it threw a kernel panic almost instantly (I reasoned it was due to my 540MB Conner harddrive using some kind of "EasyBIOS") and didn't know how to fix it (didn't have the 'net to look to for help either). I put it away, and insta

Zealotry? You call the guy a zealot because he says not all servers have a gui? Maybe you are the zealot have you thought of that? Anybody who calls somebody a zealot because of how they think OTHER people will interpret something he said is worse then a zealot. You are simply insane.

While I agree Linux/UNIX/Windows sysadmins (me) need to use a CLI for many tasks, my grandmother doesn't. She is never going to administer a server.

The concept of a CLI is hard for some people to grasp, even though it is primative when compared to a GUI. When my mom or grandmother wants to open a disk, she double clicks a pretty icon. Simple enough. Typing mount/dev/fd0/mnt/floppy is complicated.

Because sometimes it's just the best way to do something. I always keep at least one terminal window open, so if I want to find a file I just switch to it and type 'locate file'. In Windows, you'd have to click Start->Find->Files, then beat the clippy equivalent into submission, and then type in your search term.

The same is true of most Start Button based things. If I want to install a new program, I just type 'emerge package'. Want to start an app? Just type the name. Check for wireless? 'iw

In Windows, you'd have to click Start->Find->Files, then beat the clippy equivalent into submission, and then type in your search term.

How about "WindowsKey + F"? The first time in, turn off the stupid puppy, and set up the options the correct way, then a search is always just a WindowsKey+F away. No, I don't think the Windows search is all that great, but it's not that complicated or difficult to get to, either. You don't even have to switch to a terminal window. It's easier for people to lear

"Learn to do things without pretty GUIs. That's the best way to learn."

Why?

I can't wait for your reply...

Because a GUI only allows you to do tasks which the GUI designer thought to create a button for. The *nix command-line interface, with its "everything is a file" plus "tools do one small thing and do it well" design priciples, provides a rich environment where you can do almost anything you can imagine -- including shooting yourself in both feet. But *that's* very educational, and since it's onl

Unixy shell commands live in an entirely different universe than GUI commands, with completely different "laws of physics."

Most of the really good Unix tools would likely be considered "inadequate" by someone who doesn't understand them, because they are designed and intended to work in conjunction with some other tool or tools.

So the answer to your question is, yes, by design.

That's the point. Unix tools are like Tinker Toys. Each piece has some nominal value in its own right, but are really pretty ina

If you learn how to do something at the command-line level, you also learn how to automate doing things at the command-line level. A simple program is just a list of commands to be performed. Few things that are GUI-driven support any notion of automation. You become a slave to the mouse wasting time shoving around widgets, instead of the computer being a slave to perform your bidding.

what's this obsession with having people learn something? I just want to do what I need to do and the rest I'm not interested in. Si when I installed Suse and my nvidia card did't work I learned what to do to get it working and that's about it.
Maybe the CLI is usedfull for setting up servers but maybe.....just maybe, a gui is apreciated so much by people because it is a damned good way of doing things. It's easier to learn how to use a gui so taht's what I want. I installed webmin and haven't looked back

reading webpages is faster for you than clicking a few buttons in a gui? man, I remember the fun I've had with linux editing obscure files trying to get the printer or sound working...YaST in SUSE 9.2 lets me flip stuff around in a minute or two as opposed to hours of guess-and-check, reading webpages, and 8 years-out-of-date manuals.

So I'm not sure how the command line is faster. For some things yes, and certainly an expert user can do amazing things with it, but for the average user there should never b

"For some things yes, and certainly an expert user can do amazing things with it, but for the average user there should never be a need to drop into the command line."

The question is what kind of a person are you? Are the kind of a person who wants to be just another average luser^H^H^H^H^H person or do you want to be an expert? If you want to be an expert learn the command line.

My first distro was RedHat 6, which I hardly touched after I installed it. I didn't really start getting into Linux until I tried Slackware, which taught me a lot about how it all works, like how to do stuff from the command line, how to configure everything, how to install software from source, and other important things like that.

Some things are hard to learn unless I force myself, but afterwards I'm usually glad I did. It's not enough that something like a command line is available. It has to be all I h

Because the command line more powerful then the gui. There are things you can do in a command line that you can't do in any gui especially with piping and redirection. Furthermore by learning the command line you can script these actions and run them later very easily.

Why? Because the command line is more productive and more efficient. Sure it's harder to learn but once you learn it it's easier to use. That's why.

Such is the state of things in the Linux world that sometimes the way to get the most out of the OS requires plonking down into a terminal.

It took me a long time to warm up to Linux because I didn't understand how things worked underneath the pretty GUI. Coming from the DOS/Windows world I just didn't feel comfortable having the command line there and not knowing how to use it.

On one hand you have Linux distributions that largly allow you to run the system without ever needing to use the command line. Thi

I use Kububtu as well. Because I need to get work done. I first started using *nix in the early 80s, and know the commandline quite nicely. I like KDE because it uses the design philosophy of many small parts working together and exposes those parts though dcop so I can access all that power, even though a shell script.

Many people who have extensive experience at a command line happily started using GUIs when decent ones came out. Even the early textmode ones. The concept of partitioning tasks into parts of the screen and seeing your work "all on one screen" is powerful. Not to mention WYSIWYG and font and color cues on webpages.

I still use the command line a good chunk of the day - discarding web browsing or movie watching, I'm on a prompt the majority of the time. It just happens to be a konsole with a screen session on each computer.

Being good on a command line doesn't make you "better" or "more in tune" with a machine. It just means you are good on a command line.

But it doesn't say hardly anything meaningful about the various distros. Let me pick on his treatment of Mandriva, just because it's the one I know the most about, but the rest struck me as equally shallow.

1) In what way are Mandrake's/etc files less hackable than Fedora's? Or is this just a bland assertion made because the GUI tools are available? Unlike YAST, the drak tools don't get confused if you hand edit files, which I do all the time.

Problem is, distrowatch doesn't do what this guy's trying to do, which is to produce a brief, easy to read, and easy to understand summary of the biggest distros.

Unfortunately, his attempt at doing so isn't that great, for the reasons you mentioned. It glosses over lots of useful information while getting stuck in details that beginners probably don't care about anyway. And he succumbs to acronym soup (HAL, KDE, GNU, CLI) without explaining any of them.

Are you sure that's not Software- und Systementwicklung? It makes a lot more sense to take the word that's being compounded rather than a random letter from a word you've already sampled. Crazy Germans.

I was a linguistics major for a while, but I think the problem with expecting people to use terms like aspirated or tense is that most people don't know what those terms mean (really, they're linguistic jargon). Thus even if the speaker learned, the hearers wouldn't understand.

What you're wishing for is for everyone to become more educated, and while it's certainly a noble wish, it's also not entirely realistic.

Also, I've never heard anyone saying a soft c to mean anything other than a c that sounds like

Soft tends to only have meaning within a phonological and orthographical system.
For instance, while both English and Swedish have soft 'g's, in English that means the g is realised as a 'zh' sound, while in Swedish it's more like an English 'y.'
The only sensible parsing I could make of a 'soft e' in English would be a silent e. BTW, the linked page has already corrected that big of misinformation, although more remains.
But back to what you wrote, a soft c in English is obviously an 's' sound, but in,

the thing with linguistics jargon, like computer jargon, is that it's consistent, and if someone wants to look it up, the documentation is available.

the problem with describing the "u" and "e" as "hard" and "soft" is that it's not only vernacular, but it's being misused. the words he's looking for, to imprecisely describe vowel pronunciation, are "long" for the u and and "short" for the e -- "hard" and "soft" are used to imprecisely describe consonants.

[1]Currently, the biggest distros not derived from RedHat or Debian are Slackware and Gentoo which also have their own package management systems with various advantages/disadvantages[2]Now with Lycoris (just purchased by Mandriva), Xandros, Linspire, and a number of others, Mandriva no longer is known as the most dumbed down distro, but still is very good for people new to GNU/Linux[3]There are plenty of ground up distros, but most are derived either from RedHat using RPMs (RPM stands for RedHat Package Ma

"...The beauty of Slack is in its simplicity. The core of the OS is based off of BSD, whereas Debian and RedHat are based off of AT&T UNIX..."

eh... Is this guy smoking crack or something? I've played with Slack, and have multiple FreeBSD boxes. While Slackware might be the least graphical (and thus, more arcane -- like the BSD's) linux distro out there, it is not based off any BSD that I've ever seen. The kernel is linux, the userland utilities are all GNU, and the location and configuration of all the system files is definitely not BSD related.

I dunno... while much of this dude's article seemed accurate, after reading the above, I've come to the conclusion that even after all his years of experience, he's still a newb... or he's just plain smoking crack.

He's referring to the init system. Debian and RedHat use sysvinit (this is where you get/etc/rc#.d for each runlevel containing symlinks to scripts in/etc/init.d essentially), slackware uses the "bsd style" init which is basically just a bunch of scripts that just run on boot as far as I can tell (I've never looked at it that closely).

I think he got the order of his debian trees wrong. He had it at stable>>unstable>>testing. It's stable [debian.org]>> testing [debian.org]>> unstable [debian.org]. Testing is to test it before it becomes stable. Unstable is, of course, unstable. Just in case anyone reads this and uses the info. And yes, i'm being pedantic:)

The guy's information is a little out of date.... For one, while it isn't a GUI-driven installation, Slack's install *is* menu-driven. If you read what you're presented with when you boot off the install CD, it's pretty obvious, too. It says very clearly, partition the disk, then type "setup". It even suggests using cfdisk to partition the disk if you want a "gui". I'd hardly call it arcane, since the information is given to you without your needing to hunt for it.

There's some assumption that you know what you're doing, and Slack doesn't set X as the default runlevel, but there's also a really helpful book available for free at Slack's website. About the only thing you really need to know is that RL4 is X, not RL5. That, and that it uses BSD init placement (/etc/rc.d/) instead of SysV (/etc/rc.d/rc.X/). Other than that, it's Linux. What works for one distro will work for Slack. Only there's probably already a package so you don't have to compile from source, just check linuxpackages.net first.

I've tried installing Mandrake 8, 9 and 10, SUSE and Debian on my old P350, and the only install that didn't croak was Mandrake 8, and with that one I never could get the sound to work. I assume it's my hardware, but then of course that box ran Win98 just fine. I would like to learn Linux and get away from MS, and I have this nice old machine to play on. I keep hearing how easy it is, so wtf?

Well, it is always hard to get things to work on either a really old, or a really new machine. However, I suggest that you install Mandriva 10.2LE and install all the window managers and run KDE when you want fancy screens and IceWM when you want to get things done more quickly.

I'll join my voice to the ones praising Linux From Scratch [linuxfromscratch.org]. It's an amazing resource for learning how a Linux system is built.

We used it as a reference when we built the first full version of GoboLinux [gobolinux.org] -- essentially following the steps of the book and adding our modifications (configure and makefile flags) to build the new directory structure, to make our "/usr"-less distro.:)

To this day, I refer to their build instructions every now and then. They also contain a good collection of security patches, so

Everytime I hear someone say "compiling packages by hand" I think of some guy looking up assembly equivalents of the code in question, then optimizing the assembly in his head, and finally doing an opcode translation.:-)

I wonder how long it would take to do a stage 1 install of Gentoo that way? Any takers?

Everytime I hear someone say "compiling packages by hand" I think of some guy looking up assembly equivalents of the code in question, then optimizing the assembly in his head, and finally doing an opcode translation.:-)

As someone who has already done exactly what you described, in a distant Apple II past (6502 asm... large chunks of code any time you needed a 16-bit operation, what a pain) -- except for the "optimization in his head" bit of course; I resorted to plain-old paper, much easier to fix the j

I've been through Debian installs so many times, and I get so close, but there's always one thing or another I can't quite get (used to be sound, now I got that working but the darn thing won't sleep anymore)... I tried Kanotix, again the sleeping issue... downloading Ubuntu now. (Yes, in case you can't tell by the list I'm a big Debian fan... but Fedora is next on the torrent list, lousy 2.7GB download though)

Is there a reason laptops are so tricky for linux, and yes I know all about linuxforlaptops.com and the other websites which cater, but still, the installs are frustrating, the wireless has finally gotten to a point where it's ok, but still not great (enabling wep and connecting to a varity of networks etc)...

Does a "for laptops" distro exist?, I'd love it, hell I'd help with it if my skills could be used.

Sidenote: The old debian installer had much better support for laptops than the new one!

I've had really good luck with PCLinuxOS www.pclinuxonline/pclos on ThinkPads. It's a good system overall and has Thinkpad utilties installed by default. I haven't tried PR9 but 8 and 81a worked well. I wouldn't try KDE of you have less than 256mb though.

YMMV I mostly use Ubuntu now and just keep PCLOS around for a rescue CD.

I have Debian Sarge running beautifully on my 600e. Sound and everything. http://www.thinkwiki.org/ [thinkwiki.org] is the place to go for Linux on ThinkPad goodness. Also get on the Linux-ThinkPad mailing list. Details also on ThinkWiki.

I've been an avid BSD and Solaris user for the past 5 years, but never set foot in Linux-world (theme park anyone?) because frankly... I didn't know where to start.

This article gave me a good ground to work off of as far as what I should be looking at to start with. I wanted something that would give me configuration flexibility and a good set of packages, but I really didn't care much for graphical configurations (99.9% of my unix work is on the command prompt anyway, and I actually like the OpenBSD inst

Although the article mentioned YaST and the overall refinement of Suse, it failed to mention what I think is perhaps the biggest incentive to buying suse for someone new to Linux. The Documentation.
The Manuals that come with Suse are some of the best I've ever seen. Granted by the time I switched to Suse I'd been using Linux for several years and didn't find the user manual all that useful, but the administration manual is still a great reference. In fact I probably refer to it more than my Linux: Complete Reference book.
The author makes quite a point of mentioning that Suse Professional runs about $100, but fails to mention the quality of the manuals you get with it, or that you can buy an "upgrade" version, which is the full version without the printed manuals, for around $40 from Suse's website.

I love Fedora 3 because of the way it sees my hardware perfectly, but I've wrecked my system once trying to compile and install a new kernel.

Is there a howto for this?

I sure do miss the nuts and bolts style of slackware, but the instant hardware recognition makes up for a lot of it. Also, RedHat FC3 is a snap to configure my LAN. I could never figure out the arcane commands needed to set up a LAN/internet connection over cable modem/router in Slackware (although hooking a single machine to DSL was insanel

I've tried most of the major distros in the last 6 or so years: redhat/fedora, debian (I haven't tried Debian Sarge yet)/storm/ubuntu, slackware, mandrake, caldera, gentoo/etc and even a few floppy distros. The one I like best is Ubuntu. It's not a very pretty install (I was a little alarmed at the lack of input I had during the installation process), but it's polished, nimble and alot of the useless crufty apps is happily absent. A firewall is also amiss (not a good thing and the only beef I've got with Ub

IMHO, we shouldn't need a guide to the different distributions. Ideally a couple basic types that could be extensible into what people need- for one simple reason: cooperation. Why have all these different people fixing security and other problems in all these different distributions when we could take all those same people and put those eyes towards a much lower number of lines of code. IMHO, there's more in namesake adoration in the different distributions than there are actual differences in functionality provided. All these distributions with all their different package formats makes it that much harded for the open source developers to release source. Why should every end user have to compile from source when a package could be available, or why should every developer have to make packages for the umpteen different distributions? There isn't even a common source package format that would let you quickly build the appropriate package for your distribution. It's quite a pain at times to find some of the less common packages even for a 'major' distribution like RedHat enterprise linux or fedora core. IMHO, we need to ditch some of these and work towards a couple of perhaps more flexibly administered distributions.

Heck, Gentoo is the only distro where the author mentions that "more experienced" users left it but still recommend it to newbs as a learning experience.

But he fails to mention where those "advanced" users went and why it would make sense to recommend a potentially more complex distro to new non-Linux savvy users.

Being a Gentoo user myself, I agree that Gentoo is not a dpkg/rpm-based distro, and that it can take ages to compile stuff, but this blatant bias is just completely partial. He was somewhat neutral on other distros (the ones he mentioned, never mind the ones he just ignored, like Mepis), he even showed some ignorance on Slack, but Gentoo did not deserve those lines, imho!

Gentoo for me has never been about performance increases, it's been about packages compiled with the options I wanted, instead of what the maintainer wanted.

No, I didn't want mysql when I installed postfix, no, I didn't really need libjpeg/libtiff/libpng to install samba, no, this box is a server and I don't want X, why is php dependant on X! (and other weird package dependencies I've noticed in various distribs)

The flipside of the coin is that perhaps I want php or something compiled against postgresql or some other combination of modules which, for instance, fedora or debian won't allow me to have? Gentoo gets around this rather well as everything is compiled and you can link packages against the libs that you want. Also since you're compiling it yourself for your system you know it'll work whereas you can't be sure with rpms these days as they can be made for any number of distribs.

Gentoo is for advanced users who don't mind compile times and like having things customized the way they want it. It's not a bad distrib, don't knock it because of some of the users.

I've struggled to put my finger on it, but I think you nailed it. Gentoo makes it possible for a 'non-guru' like me to maintain the software on my server.

Originally, I had kicked Gentoo around because it had 'bleeding edge' support for new hardware. Wanted to run AMD64, wireless, or some ATI video chipset on a laptop - I could usually get it up and running a few months before the major distros started including it. All good and fine, but not enough to hold me to a distro when the others got the support

Being a Gentoo user, in fact, I'd very much rather prefer binary packages myself. But there's two reasons why I keep coming to Gentoo again and again, no matter what other distro I try. First, it has probably the most comprehensive list of packages. Debian is nowhere even near, neither is FreeBSD for that matter. And second, its FS layout and init system got much more sense to them than any other Linux flavor I've seen so far.

So, first wow I'm on slashdot. Second, I'm shocked I'm not getting flamed more. Third, sorry I missed so many distros. MEPIS is super and definatly should have been included. It was late and caffine started wearing off. And I'm wrong about SuSE.

Funny that the author mentions some Slackers going to Ubuntu, seeing as this slacker just gave it a shot. I haven't installed too many distros after switching to Slackware from Mandrake, but after hearing so much hype I decided to try it. At least for my system, Ubuntu turned out to be too much of a memory hog for my taste. On my laptop I have a gig of memory. With Ubuntu I had close to 600MB free with no apps running (just Gnome), whereas with Slackware I had close to 900MB free (just KDE).

Linux likes to eat up the memory and allocate it for itself. You free memory is not an indication of what is actually free. Try opening a program, it will just be given some memory that was previously allocated to the kernel.

I have to say I've had the same observation about Slackware to Ubuntu convertees. I think a large part of this stems from the fact that, for a while, Slackware+Dropline Gnome was one of the most straightforward, easy to use Linux desktop environments around to a lot of people.

Ubuntu arrived on the scene at almost the exact same time that Dropline was starting to stagnate a bit - Todd had pretty much burned out on the project and started a transition from a one-man metadistro to the project being community

If anyone wants to research which flavor of Linux to get, go to Distrowatch.com and read the reviews by online magazines. They also send out CDs for a small price if you can't download/burn your distro of choice.

My personal suggestion for newbies to get a LiveCD like Knoppix or UbuntuLive. Then move on to an friendly system like Mandriva/Fedora/UbuntuInstall/Mepis, etcetera depending on their specific needs and research (distrowatch again).

If they want to get even more into it, try something like Slackware or Gentoo. Maybe as a final stage of total mastery Linux From Scratch:D

OTOH, if they really have spefic needs, there's no end to distros out there addressing a niche market and not just the desktop.

Oh, and avoid those people who make "their" distro a religious choice and all other nonbelievers infidels.

Do "newbs" know what HAL or curses are or even necessarily the differences between KDE and GNOME? His use of terminology would be baffling if I didn't know a fair amount about Linux.

I agree. At the very least, he could have provided links to pages describing what these terms mean, or even a short blurb at the beginning of the article. There is much more to Linux than the distro, even for people that do not stray from the confines of the installation CDs. For example, I use Mandriva 2005. Just off the CDs, I have a choice between 8 or 9 desktops, at least 4 email clients, several web browsers, and of course the choice to run in X or the CLI where ncurses becomes an important term to know.

However, I still think this article does a good job. It talks in more abstract terms that do not overwhelm the new Linux user, while providing enough guidance that the user can narrow his search to two or three distributions. This is essential given that too many choices can overwhelm users, and most new users are used to having only one or two choices (e.g. Windows or MacOS).

And to think that all the author had to do was look up a wikipedia article about SUSE [wikipedia.org] to get his facts. I didn't think it would be that hard to do. Anyway, SUSE hasn't been "based" on any other distro for over 9 years now, so it hardly makes any difference, especially for beginners (which the article claims it is for), to explore any historical links that have not been relevant in about a decade.